wrong, wrong,
wrong.

an email aimed me here, and what I found made
me choke on my perrier as I tried to
understand how anyone who knew anything about
culture or the life of ANYONE under the age of
70 could, with a straight face, write this
piece of shit*:

"Big Air
Riders and skiers are the new constellations, when
they turn shooting stars and light up the night at
the big-on-awe Big Air. Join the 15,000-strong
star-gazing crowd, as the best pro skiers and
riders launch overhead to the thumping beats of
live music. The pros lay it all on the line to own
the night sky."

Background:

As I grew up, I watched as the super successful
Westbeach Contest, that filled empty Whistler beds
every spring, was co-opted and became the World Ski
and Snowboard Festival. I watched as the once
respectable contest was taken over by new sponsors
and became a backdrop for the expanded "cultural"
events, and then diminished into a regional affair
that drew more local media than international
credibility, and I could see why. I knew that the
future was worse, but this year just seems so, so
much worse. As far as I can tell, the title sponsor
of the halfpipe event is a vodka brand.

Wow.

I wonder why the Ski and snowboard industry has
run, not walked, away from this event.

Does anyone that is involved in the promotion of
this event even ski or snowboard anymore? Did any
of you actually grow up in the culture of the
mountains? The WSSF has always been a marketing
push to fill beds in the shoulder season, that's no
secret or surprise. And there is nothing wrong with
that, but at some point the success of the
peripheral events overshadowed the reason we are
all here in the first place, and the "festival"
pissed on its roots in favour of a MTV/Mountain
Dew/LCD spew fest that has little to do with
anything but self perpetuation and narcissism.

I'm sick to death of the shitty shit. I'll say what
every real snowboarder is thinking: Bring
back the Westbeach Contest. Put the
snowboard back into the "ski and snowboard
festival". I challenge the organizers of the WSSF
to make this festival into a legitimate part of the
contest scene, and to bring us back some
credibility, not just the hotel visits.

It's as simple
as this: If the best snowboarders in the world
aren't here for the contest next year, you've
failed.

*ok so as bad as that
was, the deeper I looked into the site, the worse
the fucking generic, marketing buzzword,
nothing-speak
got. Someone got paid a bunch of money to sound
like they were young and hip. My guess is that they
are either a) a 56 year old junior college drop-out
who claims to be "still really down with the
youth". b) Socially isolated, borderline
personalities with anxiety disorders. c) Editors
from Ski Magazine. d) all of the above